


Separate Ways

by nukanuke



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dizzy Deeks, Duke Lanzaro, Euler Family, F/M, Family Drama, James Euler, M/M, Original Character(s), Pre-Games
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-15 09:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17526236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nukanuke/pseuds/nukanuke
Summary: Seven years ago, before they were Kings, Dizzy Deeks and Duke the Nuke were just kids struggling to find their place in a constantly changing wasteland. With the rise of Mr. House to power, life to those neglected in Freeside only becomes harder and harder.-





	1. All Shook Up

 

 

The evening streets of Freeside were bare and silent. Those few souls who still found themselves out at such an hour walked with haste through the shadowed shells of burnt out buildings, trying to find their refuge in homes scrounged together out of the lasting fragments of an era long gone, lest something much less welcoming found them first. Darkness had overtaken the whole Mojave it seemed, except for that ever-present ominous glow from the buildings just beyond the realm of reality for those cast out by the ruler of the remnants of Sin City. 

It was only recent when this shifting tide of conquest shook the ruins of the forgotten city and changed the way of life for those locals who called it home as long as they had been alive.  _Those_ who were deemed incongruous to the elusive Mr. House’s vision of what was to come for the scrap heap they nostalgically called New Vegas were now barricaded off from again setting foot on the once-famous boulevard without playing along with the rules of the supposedly wealthy man and the imposing robots that emerged from the long-abandoned Lucky 38 to do his bidding and defend his newly built fortress. It was either to be of a caliber determined by the man himself, to show that you possessed the  _monetary value_ of a person’s worth... Or otherwise cheating his system. And it seemed, in a city once notorious for harboring the seedy underbelly of the cruel and violent side of society, the twisted, greedy version of the American Dream, there was still no shortage of liars and cheats to be found in the apocalyptic chaos of the Mojave Wasteland. 

 

* * *

 

 

 _“Get the fuck off of me, you sack of shit!”_  

The sudden voice pierced through the dusty haze of night and reverberated off of the nearly unscathed wall of the desolate Cerulean Robotics building. A small band of young men walking past the intersection paused, only briefly, and then continued on as if pretending they never heard a thing. It was never worth risking your own life for the sake of being a hero in a city where the victim would be more likely to turn right back around and stab you instead of thank you. There  _were_  no heroes in Freeside. 

There  _never_ were heroes in Freeside. 

In the shaded alley off of the main road that was once known as Fremont some 200 years ago was the source of the noise; a scrawny, freckle-faced boy probably not much older than 15 with a chaotic mess of long black hair that was clenched in the fist of his captor and falling in scrappy cascades all over his bony shoulders. He was writhing against the being that clearly overpowered him in every physical way, clawing at the ground in hopes of a chance to escape; however, he found his words to be cut short as the grimy wastelander silenced him by slamming his face down into the cracked rubble of the sidewalk, decorated with torn, crumpled playing cards. The much larger man shifted his weight and pressed a knee into the back of the child’s neck, grinding his face down into the rock and pinning him where he was to prevent any further struggle. The boy only managed a miserable groan in response. 

“Ain’t no way a street-vermin brat like you’s gonna get away with cheatin’ me like that,” the man spewed viciously in some sort of horrible country accent which only accentuated the obvious fact that he wasn’t  _from_  here. Since the wall, the reopening of the casinos, and the new and glamorous façade Mr. House had begun to construct for Vegas, people drew towards the city of lights like mindless moths to the flame of promised wealth, hoping to find Lady Luck on their side as they risked it all in one of the three glamorous gambling halls now run by  _tribals-turned-civilized._  

More often than not, she wasn’t. And more often than not, they got dumped right back here in Freeside with barely a cap to their name and a long way from home. With that, and the tribes who were forcibly removed from the strip by House’s hoard of Securitrons for rejecting the offer to go along with his delusional vision of what Vegas was going to become, Freeside was a simmering volcano of hostility between the locals and the new influx of  _squatters_.  

People took it hard, without the homes or resources to accommodate such a rush of people making life harder for every person in the city, and Freeside was quickly degenerating into nothing more than a violent slum without any leader to rise up and maintain order. 

But to  _some_ , that was  _never_ a good enough reason not to still try to milk these newcomers of every cap they wandered in with, every possession they possibly owned, with a good and  _honest_  game of poker. And if you just so happened to be as talented as the boy currently inhaling dirt under the knee of an oafish man, it was no problem to take each and every one of these gullible idiots to the cleaners without even losing a single cap.  

Only problem was, this particular gullible idiot didn’t take too kindly to the hand of fate bringing him to lose more than he thought he could afford. 

The boy twisted his head away from the concrete just enough to glare up at the boorish man, blood streaming into vibrant green eyes and down his face from a gash intersecting through his right eyebrow. He spat the warm substance off of his lips and into the man’s face, to which he responded by shoving his head back down to grind the new wound further into the piercing shards of rock that now shown red in the pale distant glow from the looming city lights above them. He growled in frustration and pain, then managed to shout a response loud enough to be heard despite the crunching of the gravel against his skull, “I  _didn’t_  cheat, you moron! I’m just  _good at poker!”_  

He paused, wrenching his head back up yet again to catch the furious eyes of the man sneering down at him. Unfortunately for him, he never really seemed to know when  _enough_  was  _enough,_ and apparently just in the thrill of testing his luck even further, continued the antagonizing with a smirk, “Clearly better than  _you_ , you big  _stupid_  fuck. You seriously gonna try to kill me over one fucking poker game? Cry me a fucking river, you sore-ass loser, you aren’t going to last a fuckin’  _week_  in Freeside.”  

That, it seemed, was  _actually_  the last straw. The man roared with anger and leapt to his feet, the fact that the boy’s hair was still tangled around his greasy fist eliciting a yelp from his victim, and he brought that giant hand down like a hammer to slam the kid back onto the street, over and over until that smug grin would be wiped from his face. With every motion the rage built into an explosive madness; crushing him down harder with every consecutive hit as the kid futilely tried to protect his face, already drenched with blood, into his arms. “You think yer _better than me,_ you scrawny little _thief?!_ We’ll see who’s better when yer nothin’ but a  _pulp_!” 

The man continued erupting with insults, smashing the child into the street. He was so focused on the rage, so consumed by the fury that he didn’t seem to notice at all the approaching sound of steady footsteps rushing towards them from further down in the darkness of the alley leading off of the main street. He also didn’t seem to notice when those footsteps abruptly came to a stop right beside him.  

The only thing he  _did_  notice, when he finally saw the shadow of a figure beside them and looked up from his work destroying the black-haired boy to tell them to fuck off, was another teenager of a similar age; wild, crazed blue eyes as cold as ice flashing in the reflection of the Lucky 38’s bright lights. He held in his hands a baseball bat, pierced with dozens of rusted shards of metal and hastily added nails, and it took what seemed to be only  _one_  second for him to swiftly swing it back, as skilled as an old-world ball player, and collide it into the man’s face with such a force that it threw him backwards into the wall of Cerulean Robotics. The chaotic assortment of sharp objects embedded into the carefully smoothed, painted wood of the bat shredded through his face like tissue paper, leaving him screaming in agony when he hurled himself to the ground off of the kid that he finally released. Only briefly did the shrill sound of his pained pleading for mercy fill the desolate alleyway before the boy, as calm and quiet as he had approached, brought the bat down in a last violent swing into the man’s temple and silenced him for good. 

The air seemed to buzz with the sudden and abrupt quiet. The only sound left in the alley was the feeble, shaky breathing coming from the boy lying face down on the sidewalk, and the frantic beating of his own heart resonating in his ears. He gasped a stunned intake in an attempt to calm the blind rage that overtook him and dropped the bat, drenched in crimson and dripping onto the pavement, to immediately fall down beside the child left in the wake of destruction to scoop him up from the rubble. In having the opportunity to survey the damage to the younger kid, the older one visibly cringed; his face was sliced open in several spots from the unforgiving shards of broken concrete, bruised and beaten black with the repetitive impact, but still he managed to squint one eye open through the forming contusion around his lid. The immediate relief at the sight before him was painted obviously across his bloodied face. “Duke,” was all he managed to say, choking back a sob. He wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and coughed to stop his tears from coming, and with the help of his friend, slowly rose to his feet.  

“James. Hey, what the fuck, man?” Duke replied gently, supporting the weight from the trembling teen that clung one arm around his neck. Despite the acerbity of the question, the fearful, worried look did not fade from his blue eyes. He tried to stop himself from considering what could’ve happened should he have appeared just a minute too late when out looking for his friend, but the thought resurfaced over and over and he shook his head to will it away. James was alive, barely, so that’s all that mattered. For some reason Duke could never understand, this kid really did  _always_ have luck on his side. 

“H-how’s it look...?” he asked, and no longer did his voice ring out with the poisonous confidence that brought him into this situation in the first place. He was quiet, the words coming out so frightened and quivering that Duke struggled to hear him over the panicked thudding in his own chest. “I’m not gonna lie,” Duke muttered back, carefully scraping a chunk of wiry black hair out of the mess of dirt and drying blood that once was his friend’s cheek, “You look like complete shit. Really, absolutely the stuff of nightmares.”  

There was a long pause that awkwardly hung between the two of them, as if James was trying to find a reason to justify getting himself into this horrible situation. After long consideration, he finally looked up, almost apologetically, into his friend’s eyes. “ …made 76 caps?” James seemed to suggest this as a valid reason for his actions and he heard Duke let out a dry chuckle. Duke tried to pull him to walk, but James hissed in pain at the attempt and clung harder onto his companion. The motion caused his head to swirl in a thick foggy haze and he found himself barely even able to focus when he tried to avert his gaze from the gruesome, blood-drenched corpse they stumbled passed, caused by his friend, on their way out of the alley.  

“Babe, your life is worth way more than 76 caps,” Duke casually replied, though the nervous undertone in his voice deceived his attempts at staying positive. “Hell, next time, at least hold out for  _80_. Goddamn.” He just wanted to calm him down. He wanted James to just stop  _shaking_. They were safe now, at least, and he wasn’t going to let anything hurt him again. 

But there was no response. Not even a sarcastic quip in retort, and nothing ever stopped  _James_  from taking the opportunity to say something snarky. Duke glanced down at him and gave him a gentle nudge with his shoulder. Still no answer. Immediately he could feel a revived rush of panic and he grabbed James’ face by the chin to force him to look up. He didn’t know much... or really, anything about medical practice, but  _anyone_  knew that getting hit in the head that many times was bad news. “Hey, buddy. James. You there?” 

“Duke,” James finally said when he met his glance, but his huge green eyes appeared vacant and dazed. His mouth opened as if he had something to more say, but instead he just furrowed his brow with a look of concern. “Duke,” he repeated after an awkwardly long silent moment of those blue eyes analyzing his own for some reason he really wasn’t too sure of at the time. The whole world spun around him, only finding himself able to stare into his friend’s face when everything else faded in and out of black. He could _feel_  the blood rushing up to the thudding wounds that covered his visage, his head violently churning his sight, and he hardly could remain standing on his feet but his arm didn’t seem to want to support the weight of his body where it sat wrapped around Duke’s shoulders, either. 

“I’m dizzy.” he stated conclusively. But before the world had the opportunity to fade completely into black, he felt himself float off of his feet and suddenly he no longer needed to be worried about how his knees were collapsing underneath of him. He blinked a few times to try to rid the flashing black and white stars from his eyes; When he could see once again, he was apparently on Duke’s back, hoisted easily up from where he previously stood to be held by his friend who was now walking fast, hastening his steps down the dark and empty corner they had been loitering in for so long. He thought that he vaguely recognized where they were, but the motion of Duke picking up the pace and practically running now caused him to feel nauseous and instead he opted to bury his bleeding face down into the shoulder his arms were wrapped around. 

“Alright then, Dizzy. You’re gonna be okay, I promise.” Duke could hear James audibly groan at that stupid joke, even with his face completely buried into his shirt.  

 _Hey,_ he thought to himself, _at least whining is better than dead._  

“I wanna go home,” James moaned, but Duke only quietly shook his head in response, not wanting to cause James to try to argue about it and get himself worked up again. He knew without a doubt if he brought him back home to  _Neela_  looking like he was hit in the face with a frag grenade they’d probably  _both_ wish that man had actually killed them. Of course, she loved them; but James' tiny little mother had a fury like none other, especially when it came to them doing something stupid and reckless. And there probably wasn’t  _much_  that was  _more_ stupid or reckless than what James got himself into tonight.  

“Just... try not to pass out just yet,” he responded softly, and his voice sounded so far away James wasn’t sure if he was even still all there anymore anyway. Duke knew there was only one other place he could take him to get help, and it wasn’t much further before the giant out-of-place brick fort came into view between the slew of rusted, collapsed metal that were once buildings. 

“You’ll be alright, Dizzy.”


	2. Hard Headed Woman

 

 

 

 

The next day, the early afternoon brought a whole new wave of blistering heat upon the seared wreckage of Freeside. Even the majority of the Followers of the Apocalypse doctors moseying around the Old Mormon Fort couldn’t stand to be decked out in their full laboratory coats, some wearing typical, fashionless, worn out button up shirts with the sleeves cuffed. Others, particularly the unique and stunning Julie Farkas, were wearing just comfortable tank tops; Hers distinctly being noticeably skimpy, formerly white but now somewhat decorated with the stains of old blood, and exceptionally captivating. At least to Duke.

Duke was lounged casually in the shade of one of the many tents encompassing the perimeter of the fort, an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. He’d already been scolded by at least three different doctors for trying to light it and eventually complied, instead finding himself becoming much more interested in counting how many times he could see Julie walk past the opened flap he sat beneath than in paying much more attention to any of those nerds. It was _right_ about up to 44 times just this morning when the sound of a muffled moan rose up from under the pile of dirty sheets crumpled upon the dusty floor of the tent beside him. Duke reluctantly tore his eyes from her _45th_ stride past the door to the darkened inside, leaning over top of his stirring companion so as to gently pull the sheet from where it lay covering his head.

If it was possible, it seemed that even after being cleaned up and tended to by the doctor, James looked even _worse_ now than he had the night before with all the blood spilling down his face. His right eyebrow was now stitched shut by the Followers doctor’s professional care, but still crusty with crimson and black from the splotchy assortment of bruises that now had fully bloomed across that entire half of his face. His lip was split and swollen, scratches and cuts and the beginnings of scabs decorating those tan, freckled cheeks. He looked like a wreck. Duke sighed, resting a hand on top of his head to brush back some of the crazy black hair that was still a tangled mess from the abuse it took and clumped together with what he could only easily assume was old blood. “Hey, Dizzy. Finally awake?” James opened one pained green eye to gaze up at his friend curiously, on account of the new nickname. He seemed to consider it in silent contemplation, judging by the confused look on his face, but after a moment it seemed he either just didn’t care to whine about it at the time, or maybe he actually _liked_ it. With an over-exaggerated sigh, he flopped himself over onto his back.

“Why is it so _fuckin’_ hot?” James grumbled, shuffling his feet under the sheet to kick it off of himself in frustration. _Of course_ , his first words awake would be some kind of complaining. Duke laughed a relieved sounding chuckle that the pain didn’t seem to affect his friend’s _shining_ attitude too much. He moved away a bit from the writhing pile of sheets to pull out his ancient beat up old lighter out of his jeans pocket and lit the previously abandoned cigarette he still held in his mouth, took one drag, then plucked it out to lower it down into his friend’s damaged lips.

James accepted it gratefully, allowing his eyes to fall shut again when he brought a grungy looking scraped-up hand up from under the disheveled sheets to hold onto it. He breathed it in slow, pleased for the nicotine to calm his ever-tense nerves. The cloud of smoke flowed from his lungs in a soft billow, he waited a moment for it to dissipate, and then he glanced back up towards his companion. “Where are we, man?” James stated bluntly, having been too preoccupied with protesting the weather to actually take in his surroundings just yet.

“Mormon Fort,” Duke reached down to swipe the cigarette and bring it up to his own mouth again. “You almost died.” James scoffed indignantly at that and tried to sit up to argue, but the sudden upright movement caused his head to swirl like a violent maelstrom. He swayed a bit, and flopped right back down into the pitiful excuse for a bed they had discarded him in the night before after he finally passed out.

“Easy, buddy. They said you have a pretty bad concussion and should take it easy for a while,” Duke seemed to move as if he was in slow motion, or perhaps that was just the way his vision was causing the whole world to reel, and he found that cigarette soon placed back into his lips where he sprawled helplessly out on his back. James groaned in misery. “This fuckin’ sucks. I feel like shit, I just want to go ho-” his whining was abruptly cut short by the sharp voice of a man calling out “Hey!” from the flap entrance to the tent. Duke rolled his eyes and slung his head back to lazily look over his shoulder at the blonde man who stood there in the sun, glaring down at the pair through thick black-rimmed glasses with an exasperated look upon his face. Unlike every other doctor, this one was still decked out in his full lab coat and all, regardless of the sweltering heat, holding a stack of papers tight within his arms. “You kids can’t be smoking in here; This is a medical tent!”

Duke sighed, one hand moving to push his own dark curls off of his forehead in such a casual way, someone could almost think it was natural. “ _C’mon,_ darling,” his voice seeped with a silky, soothing kind of charm, one which James was all too familiar with hearing when Duke was trying to get his way. Unlike himself, Duke even seemed to have a kind of _talent_ when it came to carefully crafting his words to sound just nice enough to convince others of just about anything. He personally was at a complete loss to how he did it. “Don’t you see my friend’s face? He’s really, just _completely_ a horrific mess,-” _“Hey!”_ “-and I’m just trying to help him relax a bit, y’know? You understand... And don’t worry your handsome little head about it, we will be out of here just as soon as he can stand,” he glanced up with those stunning blue eyes and offered a sly little grin that seemed to take the doctor off guard for just a moment before he cleared his throat, shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose with one finger, then hastily kept on his way passed the entrance without another word.

“You’re a dick,” James said with a pouting frown. He took one last inhale from the cigarette and then offered it back up to his friend who accepted it with a bright smile in return. “Yeah, maybe,” Duke laughed and snubbed out the stick into the dirt floor of the tent. “But seriously though, we need to get you up. Neela is probably bitchin’ Rey’s ear off by now wondering where you are.”

James huffed at the mention of his older brother, still not bothering to move at all from where he lay. “Rey’s a dick.” Duke swayed a slight shrug as if to say “well, yeah” in agreement, and stood up from the ground, dusting off his tattered old jeans as he did. It was in that moment that James was able to notice for the first time the sheer _amount_ of dark, dried blood that had stained the entire shoulder of his friend’s formerly white t-shirt. He was slightly alarmed, as if he had nearly forgotten exactly how horrible he felt, and in glancing down at his own stiffened shirt, again found himself able to grasp the magnitude of his whole injury. Seeing it caused him to feel woozy once more and he sighed in irritation. “Duke, I uhh...” he lifted a hand up to rub an eye, but the sharp pain of the bruises caused him to jerk it back to the pile of sheets at his side. “Um, well, _thank you_. For like... Y’know, saving me... or whatever.” James’ voice was nothing more than an awkward mumble and his big eyes refused to look up to meet his friend’s. He was never very good at the whole _apology_ or _thanking_ kind of shit, but Duke had risked his own life to intervene and save his.

He couldn’t think of many other people who would ever do something like that.

Duke watched him with a gentle smile, and then crouched down to take his arm and try to carefully help him up from the grimy bed. “I’m always gonna be here for you, man. We’re a team,” James groaned quietly in embarrassment, but tried to play it off as being about the pain. “Just try not to make it so easy for people to wanna kill you next time. I might need more time to find you.”

James was on his feet again with the help of the arm looped beneath his shoulders and he quietly shuffled from one foot to the next. “Y-yeah, uh, a team. Whatever.” Duke chuckled at his companion’s words, knowing James well enough to know that trying to come up with an honest-sounding thank you was probably almost _physically_ painful for him, but it didn’t make it any less sincere. The two headed out of the medical tent side by side, pausing only briefly so Duke could offer a wave and a flirtatious wink to the blonde doctor who had scolded them earlier, and then they were out through the huge imposing wood doors and back into the fray of Freeside.

During the day, Freeside could almost feel like any old neighborhood. Kids running in the street playing, an older man and a young woman having a chat leaning against one of the walls built up out of trash, a small group of teenagers arguing off behind the fort. It was only when one would happen to take a closer look into things could they see that the city really was just as filthy and seedy during the day as it had been when the nighttime fell; The children, innocently playing together in the streets, were apparently actually chasing after a giant radioactive rodent, fighting with one another about who got to eat it if the caught it. The woman speaking to the man was dressed in _very_ revealing clothing, and after discussing pricing of something in hushed tones, headed off towards the Atomic Wrangler together. And as for the teens behind the fort who did not look to be that much older than James; one stood looking entirely unamused, holding in his hand several inhalers of what one could only assume was the drug Jet while his associate was loudly complaining to him about how many caps he was allegedly trying to sell them to him for, saying “I can buy it cheaper just down the road!”

Just another afternoon in Freeside.

Nothing fazed either Duke or James anymore, having grown up in the city and seen it this way for most of their lives. In fact, they hardly even seemed to notice anything at all besides the casual chat they carried on with one another as they made their way down the street towards the familiar ramshackle house that they both knew so well.

The home was old and falling apart, just like any other house that could be seen in the wasteland, scraped together from the husk of a pre-war storefront apartment building. It was assembled and carefully rebuilt apparently dozens of times judging by the amount of mismatched garbage that was nailed, glued, or drilled to the walls, but as far was homes in the Mojave, it actually seemed to almost _resemble_ a real home; with patched walls appearing to be painted a light sunny red at some point, the front yard of overgrown, cracked sidewalk decorated with little statues made from crafted and shaped metal, and even a cute lacy curtain wafting invitingly out from an opened downstairs window.

James was dreading entering. His feet slowed to a dragging lope, and Duke had to tug on his arm to will him forward. “C’mon, I’m sure she won’t be too bad. I mean...” he gestured a hand at his younger friend’s face and continued, “Just _look_ at you.” James scowled at the insult but pushed through the creaking glass door of his family home anyway.

Right inside the front door, the room was a restyled and overly decorated version of what was formerly some kind of convenience store hundreds of years ago. There were more of the small scrap metal art pieces set around every shelf and counter, painting that looked dirty and faded hung on the wall right beside others that looked like they were just painted yesterday by an amateur artist. Draped from ceiling to wall were several strands of light bulbs that gave the room a pleasant, warm glow, intermixed between draping home-made tapestries made from vibrantly colored pieces of patched fabrics. It never really changed too much, besides slowly collecting more and more artistic junk of all kinds to be hung from the ceiling and walls and placed on every single open counter space over time.

James weaved passed a few colorful shelves towards the stairs in the far corner of the room, but was stopped in his tracks by a woman’s hand snatching onto his elbow with fervor. He gasped and practically leapt into the air in shock, whipping his head towards the person who had creeped up beside him in fear that it was his mother finding them first; but upon coming face to face with his aunt, toddler on her hip, he let out a tense and exasperated sigh. “ _James!_ Neela has been worried sick for you, what the hell happened?!” she reprimanded, shoving the kid she held into his arms so she could examine his face with her fingertips. He held his tiny cousin, staring miserably down at the little face that looked up at him with sweet innocent joy instead of meeting her mother's scrutinizing glare.

_“Hola, Aunt Luisa,”_ Duke cut in with a sweet sing-song voice, scooting his way between the two so he could press a kiss to the young woman’s cheek. Luisa laughed, ceasing the examination on James to give Duke a delighted hug. “Dukie, baby! You handsome boy! You keeping an eye on this child? What a blessing you are!” She crooned and held his face in her hands as he grinned like a kid being praised by their mother. James rolled his eyes behind them, silently bouncing his little cousin in his arms much to her delight. “ _No_ , Luisa, you’re the blessing! Because I am _so blessed_ to have met-” James interrupted with a sarcastic moan and tilted his head towards Duke, “Come _on,_ Duke, let’s go.”

Luisa “tsked” quietly at his rude interruption, giving Duke a big smooch to the cheek before shooing them away towards the stairs. “Yeah, well, _good luck_ with her, James.” Duke waved cheerfully, despite James’ sour aura, and followed the younger one on the ascent up the stairs to his home. James hugged the baby he held, as if the small girl would be enough to protect him from the wrath of his mother, and opened the door at the top of the steps with his other hand.

_“JAMES EULER.”_

 The ear-piercing scream was instantaneous the second he stepped through the door. So much for any delusional hope of quietly slipping his way in without being noticed. He winced as though the words stabbed him right through the heart and cautiously turned towards the fierce looking woman right at the corner beside the door, her hands firmly planted on her curvy hips. “Mama, I-”

“ _Don’t_ you ‘mama’ me, James, you leave in the middle of the night without telling anyone where you’re going and then vanish until next _afternoon?!_ ” Neela swooped closer like a hawk upon its prey, gripping her son by the chin and forcing him to stare into her ignited green eyes. He was more than a foot taller than her, but she still made him shrivel like a child under her vicious scolding. “What did you _do?!_ You look like a wreck!”

“Mama, I was-” James tried again, quieter this time. He unintentionally squeezed his cousin to his chest as a buffer between him and his mother, but the small toddler didn’t seem to appreciate that very much; Marie whined and writhed out of his tight embrace, reaching towards Duke who took her with an apologetic look to James. With the little one out of the equation, Neela snatched her son by the ear and dragged him into the kitchen right beside them so she could examine his face in the light from the window, ignoring his yelp of pain when she practically tossed him into a chair beside their very small dinner table. Duke followed after, leaning on the frame of the door a safe distance away so as to avoid her shifting that anger onto him instead. With James now exactly her height while seated in the chair, she shoved his face around with her palms, shouting at him in Spanish with words he didn’t understand and shuffling his hair in disgust, still solid with blood and dirt and tangled like a mop.  He grimaced, especially upon noticing his older brother Rey sitting in the chair adjacent to him, calmly sipping from a coffee mug and watching the whole event take place with an amused look in his eyes.

“How could you do this? You’re breaking your mother’s _heart_ , James, you know how much I worried for you? And now you come home? Looking like THIS?” After berating him in Spanish for so long, her voice almost seemed to be calming down a bit from the frantic screeching; the hands that had been aggressively pawing his face around now just cupped his jaw gently upon gathering just how badly he was injured. James looked up like a scolded puppy with pitiful eyes, gnawing on his lip in his typical nervous habit as he tried for a third time to speak, “Mama... I was just trying to get some caps, y’know... So I could help you out,” he added the last part as if it was a quick save at the end, “But things kind of went wrong, and... Um, Duke had to save me.” He could hear Rey snort back a laugh in the background, but stifled his instant fury at that so his mother wouldn’t have another reason to scold him. “He had to take me to the Mormon Fort. I guess, they said I had a pretty bad concussion.” When he slowly dragged his words to a finish, there was a dead silence between all five of them in the room. He wasn’t sure if she was just preparing another round of reprimanding in her mind, but the look upon her face indicated something between sorrow and anger. He just couldn’t be too sure which was going to lash out.

“My baby, you are just like your father,” she finally said after a long moment and gave him a soft kiss to his bruised-up forehead. He let out a shaky sigh he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding in in the tense atmosphere. “You don’t _need_ to be making money for this family yet, Jimmy, you’re only 15! And I _don’t_ want you out there gambling, people in this city can be dangerous and unpredictable. You got _lucky_ this time,” her voice suddenly turned stern again and she jolted his head up so his green eyes were forced to return the stare into those which matched his exactly, “But _I do not_ want to hear of you doing this again.”

James nodded briskly, and with one more kiss to his head, she released him. Then she turned upon Duke, forgotten in the corner of the room, playing with the young child he’d been holding onto. With all eyes turned on him, he froze and backed up a step. “Duke.”

He swallowed, knowing she could easily (and had before in the past) unleash the same lashing of words upon him as she had on James, but her expression never flipped the switch into wrath again. Instead, she just stepped over towards him and wrapped her arms about his shoulders, requiring him to lean down a bit so she did not need to stand on her toes. “Thank you, for taking care of my son. You are a good boy. He is lucky to know you.”

Duke beamed, giving James a wink to rub it in his face that he wasn’t getting the same treatment he had received. James silently wrinkled his nose in a sarcastic response. When Neela pulled back from her motherly embrace, she rested a hand gently on Duke’s cheek, giving him a deceptively kind smile from where she stood so far lower than he did.

“But,” she began in her beautiful, delicate voice, “if I hear that he is out gambling and you are out with him... I will _beat your ass_ just as hard as I do his.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
